Keyboards of yesteryear have a certain je ne sais quois. Perhaps it’s the oddball layouts, before everything settled into (mostly) neat camps based on use cases and keycap availability. Perhaps it’s the chonky old switches (when “low-profile” meant only an inch high, rather than two). Perhaps it’s the big aircraft carrier bezels and unapologetic expanses of case surrounding the keys, an appropriate frame for a work of art. Is it the stepped caps and lit/locking lock keys? I think it’s all of this.
Back in the day, caps and boards were birds of a feather that were built together – bespoke keys existed for OS and architecture-specific functionality (DEC “GOLD” key, anyone?). The layouts were beautiful, varied, and more often than not broke out of the rectangular box, especially true for terminal keyboards and esoteric computers of the 70s and 80s.
You see the modern keyboard community flirting with the design language and ideas of yore, from the curved Model OLED to @keyboardbelle’s Cadette case to AKB’s beautiful behemoth board OGR (endgame, amirite?). This shows the viability and timeless allure of these designs. Let’s go full retro, dig out our parents’ boards (and grandparents’ boards!), and fill this thread full of the OG inspirations!
Really just the one, and it’s impressionistic at best. The yellow just screams Atari 8-bit to me, and from the XE models specifically I took the basic aesthetic of a rounded rectangle front profile extruded back and then plopped onto wedges. The aluminum plate was a fait accompli, part of a previous 3x order from Xometry.
Love the M0110. Don’t have one of those myself, but as far as personally curated Apple history, so far I’ve got an AEK I, AEK II, NeXT Non-ADB, and, improbably, a Cassie.
Then imagine it actually happened two decades earlier. Crazy.
"I joined Apple in May 1984 and Cassie was my second or third project, probably around '85 or '86.
Such an interesting design. It basically seems like a high-end game-pad, with nylon sliders over posts and carbon contacts. @kimslawson, surely you’ve at least tapped out a few words on it; how does it feel?
It’s rough, really. I imagine some of that is down to it being 40 years old and needing a good cleaning. Some of the keys stick. It’s very tactile, very scratchy/frictiony, the caps rotate freely in a disconcerting way. I’ll try to make a typing video to demonstrate when I can.
Paging @HokuraChan… First typing test (forgive the fluorescent light hum).
The feel is somewhat stiff and tactile, with quite a short actuation/travel distance somewhere between laptop keys and a modern low-profile switch (choc). It would be illuminating to see a force curve, I’m sure. I haven’t investigated why some of the keys go crunch and stick (e.g. Option, Enter). The spacebar appears nicely stablized, indeed, for a 7.5u key!
Here’s two I’d consider GOBs! A gold badge Zenith Z150 with SKCL Greens that I got a while back that is in really good shape. Then a Magnavox Videowriter with SKCM Browns I’ve had for awhile that is excellent, almost NOS condition.
As an aside if you do go hunting for brown ALPS these are the best option IMHO. As the Videowriter was a word processor that hooked up to your TV, so the majority of them saw lighter usage & if you’re lucky basically no usage! I think since they were marketed as a cheaper alternative to PCs at the time, but PCs drastically dropped in price only a few years after the Videowriter released is the reason for that.
I need to track down a nice ZDS board. They look so nice. I’m always put off by the horror stories of needing to clean or repair old Alps switches, though.
